GPrimeAlpha

Join Date 04/2007

Non-Combat Diplo Game (DA)

Anyone ever been successful playing a non-combat, diplomatic victory game? I recently tried this. Playing as Terran (super diplomat), maxing out diplo attributes, I gave myself the rules:

- Cannot build or upgrade any ship to have weapons or defences

- Cannot research or trade for any combat tech (weapon or defense) - soldiering allowed.

The game quickly showed that the Drengin had the strongest military, with the Thalans were becoming the largest empire. To build my relations, I trained trade and created trade routes with everyone. I frequently gave everyone gifts.. 100bc at a time to start out, then later in the game 500 and 1000 bc.

Once I had trained alliances, I had to give/trade the tech to everyone else in order to actually make them allies. This is where it became hair-pulling.

From then on, it became obvious I could only ever ally with everyone, less 2. For some reason, there would always be 2 races (different at different times) that would resist me. Eventually I'd have my group of allies attack one, and the war would go nowhere.

At some points, my coalition would disintegrate, as the weaker races become concerned with the stronger races. One of my allies would declare war on the other, and then I'd either be at war with a former ally or break the previous alliance. Typically I'd go to war, in the effort to eliminate the dissident. In the meantime, I'd end up re-allying the previous elimination target, who wasn't getting eliminated at all.

Having the military limitation meant I couldn't help my allies, either directly or indirectly. Perhaps sending them weapons techs would have helped, but that was against my rules. I could only give them cash, and it didn't seem to help.

At various points, I was soooo far ahead in tech and economy, I could easily have begun a conquest campaign and won. As a guy that typically plays only conquest, this temptation was hard to resist, but resist I did.

At various points I'd ally with the Drengin and the Thalans, while keeping them at war with each other (since they were the strongest races). Unfortunately, I could never keep the alliances solid. They'd flip out as one of my allies attacked them, then declare that I was backstabbing them. Finally, they wouldn't make peace with me for ANYTHING, saying that I kept attacking them. Perhaps a bug?

In the end, the Drengin and the Thalans were the only races left, besides me. The rest of my coalition were weak, and died... and despite my efforts kept waring with each other, only weakening themselves. I spent a lot of my fortune (toping out at over 300k bc as I recall) trying to keep them banded together, pointed in the right direction.

In the final stages of them clearing out my allies, who were basically just my cannon fodder, it became obvious I was next. I had no choice but to switch to a technological victory, and win that way.

So, I was able to win without building a single combat ship or researching a single combat tech, but I didn't win the way I had hoped.

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Maiden666

Join Date 12/2008

+62

You took a very interesting approach tot his game. Personally I think it's unlikely that you will ever win such a game - assuming you exclude Technological or Cultural Victory from your options of winning over other races.

This has a reason and it's all grounded in the way the diplomacy system in GalCiv2 works --> straight to war. You have 3 factions there who despise themselves, to not be it enough even within these factions there are some inbuild penalties which distort intrafactional harmony; ie. the Yor receive -1 to every other race, Drath dislike Altarians etc pp.

Furthermore, the game is built upon expansion - with expansion into foreign territory receiving also a penalty in diplomatic relations.

Of course, this could be countered by lessening the number of habitable planets/stars in the game setup.... as could someone start a game with races moded in the ethical alignment. Still, I think there would be war, I remember one time had a game running in DL with max galaxy size with planet/system count tuned down to max (wanted to do a Tech Victory only with having one system and used the opponents only to trade for cash via techs) and still the would declare war on each other with no possible chance to ever conquer the enemy planet.

However, I think what you did with your game is a very important role in every game that focuses on a Tech- or Cultural Victory where you sacrifice a strong military (and the diplomatic bonus you get out of it) in favour of any of the 2 and where you need to pay close attention to the foreign policy screen as any military threat can heavily alter your plans in a few turns.

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Actually, at least on Tough, it is possible to win a diplomatic victory without ever going to war. However, it is almost certainly impossible to do so without building up a military to act as a deterrent. Random events may also cause you to go to war or encounter other types of military threat (like pirates).

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting qrtxian,

reply 2

That's also been my experience (I've never played much above Tough). The 'power rating' is one of the game's biggest diplo flaws, for me anyway. I would have loved founding the Grand Alliance without building warships, but I never found a way to use diplo and tech strength to squeeze the aggressors out of the galaxy.

The AIs just won't take alliances seriously, so you have no hope of having them actually help defend you if all you can do in a war is provide techs and BC, no matter how ludicrously far ahead of the others you might be in research and income.

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To be fair, that may be based on the nature of your ally. In some games I've survived only with the help of a powerful ally when things went badly. It also varies by AI: some races, like the Altarians, make very good allies, while others, like the Terrans, are utterly worthless. Like a lot of things in this game, it depends.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

To be fair, that may be based on the nature of your ally. In some games I've survived only with the help of a powerful ally when things went badly.

That depends on what you mean by help. The only 'help' I ever get is when a strong AI keeps pressure on a mutual enemy and doesn't break our alliance. To me, 'help' would be taking on fleets that are attacking my assets when my ally has idle units nearby and I have little or nothing in the area.

Like a lot of things in this game, it depends.

That's definitely true. The Root of Replay Value and all that.

I've had nearly every faction as an ally at one time or another and I've had some (like the Altarians) many times. I haven't had consistent behavior from them, and I've even been betrayed by the Altarians a few times (I'm almost always Neutral and I don't think they like that very much).

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Some of the things you guys are talking about I did run into. I tried to counter them as best as I could. I'll explain.

First, yes, if a territorially adjacent race goes to war with you, without a military you've got a real problem. For that reason, one of my primary concerns was to always keep adjacent races allied or at least not hate me.

In the event an adjacent, or geographically nearby race DID go to war with me, I had to make sure they had plenty of more powerful targets to keep them occupied. For this reason, I tried to keep the stronger races allied. Unfortunately this sometimes created a conflict of interest, as it was usually the Drengin that was strongest, and my other allies hated them.

One does have a bit of an advantage, when not having a military, in that the AI doesn't seem to see you as much of a threat (although they sort of see you as a joined-team with your allies, so this is only partially true). Anyway, if someone is at war with you, as well as, say, 3 other stronger races, they may be inclined to ignore you entirely. Especially if those other races are adjacent to them and you are not.

Some extra thought has to go in to who you make go to war with whom. You do NOT want a race you are at war with to also be at war with a race on the far side of your territory. In that case, their fleets would go through your territory, and take you out along the way. It was not unusual for me to pay large sums to my ENEMY to make peace with another race solely for this reason.

I should mention that at one point the Drengin were at war with me, and they went after some of their other war target's star-bases that were near my territory. Once they destroyed the star-bases, they sent their fleets towards their other war targets, but that had them on a vector through my space. While they weren't conquering planets, they were destroying any ships they found along the way. Interestingly, the Altarians (allies with me, enemy with Drengin) DID send a couple fleets into my space, seemingly to defend me from these Drengin fleets (came straight to my space, then promptly turned and chased after the Drengin fleets). Of course, they came too late, but I did find it interesting.. it was the only case where it looked like an ally was actively defending me.

I think the difficulty of this type of game is balancing all the contrasting issues. Having people go to war with you is not a problem, so long as they aren't adjacent (buying you time), and your other allies can eliminate them fast enough. My biggest problem was the constantly shifting relations, and I think that was possibly due to the ethical alignment of the various races. Perhaps if I created a coalition of only 'good', I'd be able to maintain it's integrity long enough to achieve the diplomatic victory by eliminating the 'evil' races. I suppose early-on this was my strategy, but the problem, in my game, was that the evil races were just too powerful, and my own rules prevented me from increasing the strength of my allies military.

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